The UC Summit ConvenesThe UC Summit Convenes

Vendors, solution integrators, and consultants can talk frankly about the challenges they face in making UC a reality.

This week is the UC Summit, the annual event organized by UCStrategies and intended to bring together UC vendors, solution integrators and consultants to talk about how they can work jointly to successfully profit from UC. The event features many of the members of the UCStrategies team, led by UCStrategies founder and primary organizer, Jim Burton. However, each of us looks at different parts of the UC spectrum.

Major topics of discussion include how to separate "UC" from "IP PBX" and get the market focused on the bigger picture of communications enabled business processes (CEBP). Specifically, how do we start justifying investments in UC with returns that come from departments other than IT and telecom? We now have lots of case studies to illustrate the benefits (see http://www.ucstrategies.com/uc-resources/unified-communications-case-study-library.aspx), but it calls for systems integrators that get beyond the attitude of "sell a big PBX every 10-years," to ones who can work with business unit managers to integrate communications to optimize business processes.

Collaboration is also a major topic, as some in the vendor community are trying to separate collaboration from UC. IBM probably took the first big step in highlighting the importance of collaboration in UC when it started referring to its offerings as UC² (for "Unified Communications and Collaboration"). In truth, all of the elements of the communications complex are part of UC, so picking a feature "flavor of the week" leans more in the direction selling more boxes (albeit conference bridges and video teleconferencing equipment this time) than managing the transition to this next great wave of innovation.

As always, my focus is the mobility aspects of UC. While mobility has been a big area of UC, UC has scarcely caused a ripple in the mobility space. It's not in the mindset of the mobility buyer, and among the mobility suppliers, the only one that seems to give credence to UC is RIM. Of course, their focus in on keeping the BlackBerry product line the primary mobility option in the enterprise.

Mobility and UC are progressing on parallel tracks, but frankly, the users seem more interested in enhancing the mobile experience than in dabbling in UC. This situation means that it will be up to the UC community to bridge the gap to mobility; the mobile camp seems to be getting along quite well ignoring UC. That will call for more engaging mobile products, but also for a go-to-market strategy that works for the UC vendors' channel partners as well.

Fortunately, the inquiries I've been getting from the UC vendors of late seem to indicate that they are getting beyond the stage of denying there's a problem, and onto how they can start making their mobility offerings a product advantage as opposed to an "RFP Check-off". As we saw in the "Integrating Mobility and UC" RFP session at Enterprise Connect last month, enterprises can save real money with mobile UC. If you can do that but still can't get buyers to look at it seriously, you've got a problem.

The UC Summit is all about sharing ideas, in an environment that is unique in the industry. There are no customers present, so the vendors, solution integrators, and consultants can talk frankly about the challenges they face in making UC a reality (a "successful" reality) from beginning to end. The beginning is that capability dreamed up in the lab, and the end is an organization whose business is positively impacted by the application of that capability. Solution integrators have become the primary front line sales channel for UC, but ideas and support have to flow up and down that channel to ensure success. This week is all about helping facilitate that flow.